Glad to see you got the microcode sorted in the end.
You may find that slightly less vcore is required with the new microcode as apparently GTL improvements for QX9650 C0 was one of the fixes. I found this
Anyway with regards to the MSR issues I know that there are some people who believe that errors are expected.
Well I have done this test today on a DELL at work.
SMILatency_DELL.jpgMSR_DELL.jpg
Both pass with flying colours.
If Dell can do this, why can't ASUS?
John